Setting Up Auto-Orders and Subscribe & Save

An auto-order is a standing arrangement to reorder a product for a patient on a fixed cycle. Each night OfficePro looks for plans that are due, creates the orders, and applies a recurring discount if you offer one.

It bills patients on a schedule with nobody watching, so it is worth setting up deliberately rather than discovering how it behaves from a phone call.

Before anything else: is it switched on?

Auto-orders run for practices on BackOfficePro. This is part of your subscription, not a setting inside OfficePro - you cannot enable it yourself. If you are not on BackOfficePro you can still record auto-order plans, and nothing will ever generate from them.

If you are unsure, ask support before you set expectations with a patient.

Set your discounts

In ProductPro settings there are two:

• Subscribe and Save First Autoorder Discount - a welcome discount on the first purchase, offered in the patient portal only. It appears on the patient's Subscribe & Save option as a green badge - 10% off today if you set it to 10%.
• Subscribe and Save Subsequent Autoorder Discount - the ongoing discount applied to every refill the nightly job creates. This is the one that matters financially, because it applies for as long as the plan runs.

Both are set in 5% steps up to 30%. Leave either at 0% to offer no discount.

Work the ongoing percentage out before you set it. On a monthly subscription, 10% off is 10% off twelve times a year, on a product you have already discounted to a dispensary price.

Set the shipping and the notification

• Refills marked for shipping are charged your shipping fee, and premium shipping is charged Premium Shipping Charge. Pickup refills are free. Set these before the first run rather than refunding afterwards.
• Order Message User decides who receives the summary message after each night's run. Leave it on -- Select User -- and the summary goes to nobody in particular, which is the same as no one knowing orders were created. Point it at whoever actually packs orders.

When the orders appear

The job runs once a day, late in the evening Pacific time. Orders created overnight are waiting the next morning as Pending, alongside everything else in your patient orders queue - they are ordinary orders from that point on, and are picked, packed and completed the same way.

It works ahead of each due date by your Auto Order Lead Time (Days), set in ProductPro settings - 7 days if you have never set it. A plan due on the 29th with an 8-day lead time is ordered overnight on the 21st, so there is time to pick, ship or arrange pickup. Each auto-order shows Due and its due date in the patient orders list, on the order and in the patient's cart, and the summary message gives each order's due date, in red once it is due. Fill it when it suits your workflow: the patient does not need it before then.

The next refill is always counted from the date the last one was due, not from the day its order was created or completed, so the cycle never drifts. A plan that is overdue produces one order, not one for every cycle it missed.

Decide your refill policy

Each product on a patient can carry a refill constraint:

• No Constriction / As Needed - no limit.
• Constrict Refills ( - a fixed number, counted down as they are used.
• Blocked - No refills - none, regardless of any plan.

For anything a provider wants to review before it keeps going out, set a refill count or an end date on the plan. An auto-order with no end runs until somebody stops it.

A different feature with the same name

Vendors have auto-orders too. On a vendor's contact record, Auto Order raises a purchase order to your supplier on a cycle - the record will say This vendor is set to auto order every so many days. It restocks your shelves; it has nothing to do with patient subscriptions and no patient is billed by it.

Check it before you rely on it

• Set up one plan on a real product with a short interval and watch what appears the next morning.
• Confirm the discount you expect is on the order line.
• Confirm the summary message reached the person you nominated.
• Confirm a shipped refill was charged shipping and a pickup one was not.